PhenomeNEWS has ceased publication as of the end of 2008, approximately. We honor their 30 years of good work, and send them best wishes for their future endeavors. Their web site has also been retired, so we've posted the full text of these articles on our own site.

Have you ever joined forces with another, only to find out some time later (days? months? years?) that his or her desires in life were actually nothing like yours? And, perhaps, that in order to stay in partnership you had put some part of yourself on a shelf or in the freezer? Perhaps it was such a large part of yourself that you had to rent a storage area!

Or have you thrown your lot in with a group of people intent on creating something new – a community, an organization, an inspired solution to some pervasive problem and then begun to feel like the real problem was your so-called teammates?

Some dreams we just cannot make happen alone. (Try folding a large tarp on a windy day!) There’s something exciting, romantic, inspirational in this: joining with others to make our shared dreams come true. But in reality, we often come nose-to-brick-wall with the truth of being human: people are messy, complicated, imperfect, frustrating, confusing beings. What do we do with that? How do we make our way, as individuals, partners and communities, with our many diverse but interrelated goals and dreams?

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who really wanted to be a writer. Her mother told her, however, that she couldn’t make a living at that, that she needed a real job She was defiant, but her mother’s voice became a voice of her own, living inside her head. In time she grew up and got a “real” job and she pretty much gave up writing for a long time.

Many – perhaps all – of us have stories like this. Do you? Which of your passions or interests bring out the voices that say, “You’re not smart enough!” or “That’s too frivolous or selfish!” or “Sure, you can do that, but you have to do a few years – or decades - of preparation first!”

And then, when you actually do something, do you sometimes hear “Oh, my God, that was awful!” or “You’ll never succeed at that!” or “They didn’t like me!” – even when all signs point to a successful experience?

All of us have this internal dialogue. Perhaps we even consider it to be the voice of common sense! But true common sense moves us toward our goals. These voices cut off options, stop us from doing something that truly matters, tell us why we shouldn’t do it again if we have the gall to try it once

We each have a particular genius that we bring to this world – what is yours? What unique gift or gifts do you possess, that no one else brings in exactly the way you do? Whatever they may be, such gifts require commitment and dedication, a real willingness to develop and polish them. Where do you do this in your life? Does it come through your work? A creative endeavor? A new invention? A community project?

The first step, of course, is the commitment: devoting time, energy and resources to it. You must actually sit down to work on or play with this gift of yours – to plan, write, make phone calls, practice, do some research – whatever it takes.

But what happens next? Is the going easy and straightforward or do you find yourself making less progress than you had hoped and not sure where the time went? Do you find that lots of unrelated things intrude on your consciousness – email, lunch, the clutter in your living room, the doodad in the garage that you’ve been meaning to give a thorough cleaning for months now – clamoring about their importance at this exact moment?